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Monday, 28 October 2013

FLEGGIN A DEAD WHITE HORSE

Get off yer white fookin horse and stop fleggin it Billy.Yer white horse is dead, people drive cars these days, unless you are a woman in Saudia Arabia or a motorist in British Occupied Ireland, stuck in yet another Fleg protest, stuck in the past, blocking the United Ireland of the future. So here is a little again for the uninitiated, with the help of sources like the Urban Dictionary, The Economist, explaining a little of what this Fleg thing is about.

Fleg

The word 'flag' is pronounced by people in places like east Belfast and Lisburn with thick Belfast accents. The term is a perfect encapsulation of the disproportionate and overblown reaction to the removal of the Union Jack (as in 'de fleg') from above City Hall in Belfast. Where previously it had flown for 365 days per year, it is now flown on 17 designated days of the year, in line with many other British cities.

The event caused a portion of the Protestant community ('fleggers') to make international pricks of themselves as they proceeded to wreck the fucking place, claiming it was another erosion of a 'British' identity they perceive to have been under attack since the horrifying spectre of equality reared its head in Northern Ireland.

The word 'fleg' - and indeed 'fleggers' - fittingly describes a section of humanity unconcerned with knowledge, reality or the vagaries of the English language. Like America's tea-baggers they are ruled by instinct, fear and paranoia with a side dish of rampant bigotry and startling ignorance of the world around them.

"Wat de fuck like! The taigs got de fleg took down! Let's wreck de fuckin place! No surrender!"

"De fleg has been took down! Before ye know it there'll be a united Ireland! Attack Short Strand! God Save The Queen!"

Just a few pedantic points. Northern Ireland is not in 'Britain' despite being in the 'Britain' section of The Economist. Britain is an island which consists of England, Scotland and Wales. For a range of historical reasons related to Britain's colonial past, Northern Ireland is part of the UK (United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland). Also it's the Union Flag, not the Union Jack. The latter describes the Union Flag being flown on a ship.

If the people of NI want to remain part of the UK, they have to start behaving like UK citizens.Otherwise we should start spending our annual £5 billion contribution elsewhere, preferably mainland UK

Belfast City Council took a democratic decision to fly the Union Jack on designated days, in line with general policy in the UK mainland.The Loyalists (working class Protestants) do not seem to understand what democracy means. Hence their protests.It is not at all clear what their sense of "Britishness" is. It appears to be limited to BNP-type politics with very large added doses of Protestant supremacism and anti-Catholicismmike2R

Jan 16th, 18:08

It is strange how alien people who insist on their Britishness can seem so alien!.

I feel no connection to the Loyalists of NI any more. Their aims are not my aims. Their culture is not my culture. I wish their flag was not also my flag.

To underestimate the importance of symbolism in Northern Ireland is to fail to fully understand our 'Troubles' altogether. What flags represent - identity, culture - are precisely what long divided the country.

That Catholics now outnumber Protestants in Belfast is an indicator that a large proportion of the city not only don't relate to the union flag, but would happily reject it. Hence Northern Ireland’s Equality Commission’s legal opinion that its permanent flying “could be held to infringe the concept of a neutral working environment [in the building]”.

Putting the flag back up would solve nothing in the long term.

7

Not sure the ROI woul be that happy to get the Northern Counties handed back in any shape or form.

Changing demographics in NI means that what was once a minority is now the majority, and they will no longer tolerate a second-class status. The Peace Process rests upon this political fact. Soon, laws passed in London will no longer hold sway in NI and political union with the Republic of Ireland will result. Sorry if your feelings are hurt, but the demographics are against your position.

K

3

Actually if you knew about history and culture, you would realize the north is in fact very easy to distinguish which stock many people come from, the flight of the earls and to the present has a well documented history, so much so that the cultural identity of protestants in NI is termed under ulster-scots, funny not ulster english or welsh.

There are some major flaws in your comment, but I am going to ignore them, because you seem reluctant to think, so I will point out the obvious. It's actually not your flag or 'fleg', considering the vast majority of protestants in Northern Ireland are Scot settlers your connection only really applies to the blue of the flag, therefore if you take into context the fact that Scotland itself wants out, and the flag would ultimately have to be reduced to white and red, neither color representing you! I find it odd that your 'loyalist' stance needs a flag that does not represent them. I could baffle you with the actual long winded version of your history and why you are under the impression it is your flag, but it is pointless, as you say ' NO SURRENDER', who needs a brain, when they can write in caps!

Wrong: it _is_ a political issue, just not one of the Westminster variety. NI Protestants are keenly aware that by 2015 Catholics will have demographic parity with them and they are terrified that at that point the British Government will seek a referendum on NI's future. Since some Protestants have been devoted (however unsuccessfully) to a form of ethnic cleansing, they are also scared that given a chance the Catholics might do the same to them.

There comes a time to stop giving into thuggery. Most of the people causing trouble have no interest or understanding of politics, which ultimately is the only way forward. You cannot give into mob mentality, so the buck has to stop somewhere. Right minded people on all sides appreciate that. Sometimes democracy is tough to take, but it beats mob rule.

"The more things change, the more they stay the same"

born in Belfast in the last year of the first half of the last century - 1949, bred on the Crumlin Rd, Rathcoole and again the Crumlin Rd, as a family we escaped each year, for the 12th fortnight, across the Border to the maternal farm in Monaghan.

The next door neighbour was a Master in the Orange Lodge. One of his three sons was the same age as myself and his best friend, and my friend, sadly died in the last few months a Passionist priest.

I went to Holy Cross Boy's School which was then up Ardoyne Avenue, past the Bus Depot, Glenbryn and Hesket - the site of the now infamous Girl's Primary School.

I played in Woodvale Park, my parents shopped on the Shankill, during the summer, we roamed over Carr's Glen and up the Cave Hill.

No part of Belfast was closed to me as a child or a teenager, except for the parks and cinemas on Sundays and when the Lodges marched.

I left Belfast in 1968 and moved to London.

In 1969, a mob ordered my family and other families in the street from their homes. Some of their neighbours cried when they left, others hide behind their curtains, others still joined the mob and pointed out the Catholic houses. The RUC stood watch across the street and when requested to intervene, turned on their heel and walked away.

My father was impotent to defend his family, my mother terrified for her husband and her children. The families joined the stream of other refugees and made their way to West Belfast.

As children, we were made aware always that we were different from our neighbours and that the same job opportunities would not be available to us. We would not find well paid skilled employment in Mackies, the Shipyard, Shorts, the Sirocco Works, Richardsons, in the textile and tobacco plants around Carrickfergus. These, and numerous others, were reserved occupations for the chosen people. Their future was assured by their religion, their advancement by their membership of the Lodge.

Our hope, our advancement lay in education. An educated person could find employment, but might not break through the establishment ceiling. Educated people for low paid admin jobs, in laboratories, in retail were in short supply, for you did not need little more the a primary education if you were one the the chosen.

I returned in 1969. With a grammar school education, I found work in the theatre, industry, the Civial Service and 3rd level education. My other eight siblings are all in full time employment, six of them in Belfast, some in senior positions.

Now, everything have changed. The heavy industry has all but gone, the old skills are no longer required, the traditional employment for generations is no more. The Ulster Unionist Party, the RUC, the B-Specials, the Yard, the power of the Lodge are all but blown away by the winds of change, diminishing memories of the glory days when you could triumph over your less fortunate neighbours and were encouraged, and facilitatied to do so, by your political masters and their organs of State.

A cold realisation is dawning, an anger, a fury, a rage within. The sense of betrayal is beginning. The veneer of superiority crumbling. The lie and deception is being reveal and they are in denial to their misuse and abuse. A giant had fallen, and lashes out in its death throes at both friend and imagined foe. The old try to cling to their misguided tradition, their misplaced values, todeny the change, and to fear for the future of their young. The young rage at the loss of their past and despair for their future. They are the dispossessed, unwanted and unloved by those to whom they pledge their allegience.

Their politicans fear them and try to perpetuate the lie, hoping beyond hope that they can roll it all back, doing yet another disservice to their electorate, clinging on to the last vestiages of their former glory. Their delusion continues, the old men do not go gently into the dark night.

A community is so blinded by its blinkered past, by its pride that it has not found the capacity for rational thought as to its future. Unable to look forward, it looks back to simple times.

If they are to go forward, they must rid themselves of the remnants of their past and abandon all their tainted self-serving politicans. Distant relatives moved to America and learning from their mistakes help found another nation.